Joseph Balsamo (79 page)
” Have I not met Monsieur de Jussieu at the countess’s ?”
” The botanist ? “
” Yes.”
“I’faith, I believe so; he comes to Trianon, and the countess lets him ravage her flower-beds.”
” That is your affair ; and Jussieu is a friend of mine, too.”
” Then the thing is done.”
“Almost.”
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” I shall get back my Gilbert, then ? “
M. de Sartines mused for a moment. ” I begin to think you will,” said he, ” and without violence, without noise. Kousseau will deliver him up to you, bound hand and foot.”
” Do you think so ? “
‘ ‘ I am sure of it.”
” And what must be done to bring this about ? “
” The merest trifle. You have, no doubt, a piece of vacant ground toward Meudon or Marly ? “
” Oh ! no want of that. I know ten such between Luciennes and Bougival.”
” Well, get built upon it what shall I call the thing ? a philosopher’s trap. “
” Excuse me, what was it you said ? “
” I said, a philosopher’s trap.”
” Pardien ! and how is that built ?”
” I will give you a plan of it, rest satisfied. And now, let us be off j we begin to be noticed. To the hotel, coach-
CHAPTER LXIV.
THE TWO FETES.
THE important events of history are, to the novelist, what gigantic mountains are to the traveler. He surveys them, he skirts their foot, he salutes them as he passes, but he does not climb them. In like manner, we shall survey, skirt, and salute that august ceremony, the marriage of the dauphiness at Versailles. The ceremonial of France is the only chronicle that ought to be consulted in such a case. It is not, in fact, in the splendor of the Versailles of Louis XV., in the description of the court-dresses, the liveries, the pontifical ornaments, that our particular history, that modest follower who takes a by-path leading along ‘the highroad of the history of France, would find anything to pick up. Let us leave the ceremony to be
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performed amid the brilliant sunshine of a fine day in May; let us leave the illustrious spectators to retire iii silence, and to describe or comment on the marvels of the exhibition which they had just witnessed ; and let us return to our peculiar events and personages, which also have, historically speaking, a certain value.
The king, weary of the ceremonies, and especially of the dinner, which had been long, and was an exact imitation of that given on the marriage of the great dauphin, son of Louis XIV. the king retired to his apartments at nine o’clock and dismissed everybody. The dauphin and his bride had also retired to their apartments ; and the immense crowd of spectators of the ceremony thronged the courtyard and the terraces of Versailles, now one blaze of light, and waited anxiously for the fire-works, which were exhibited on a scale of unusual magnificence.
The evening, at first lovely and serene, by degrees be* came overcast, and gusts of wind, gradually increasing in violence, tossed the branches wildly to and fro, as if they had been shaken by some giant arm ; while immense masses of clouds hurried across the heavens, like squadrons rushing to the charge. The illuminations were suddenly extinguished, and, as if fate had determined to change the general rejoicings into gloom, no sooner had the first rockets been discharged, than the rain descended in torrents, as if the heavens had opened, and a loud and startling peal of thunder announced a terrible convulsion of the elements.
Meanwhile, the people of Versailles and Paris fled like a flock of frightened birds, scattered over the gardens, in the roads, in the woods, pursued in all directions by thick hail, which beat down the flowers in the gardens, the foliage in the forest, the wheat and the barley in the fields. By morning, however, all this chaos was reduced to order, and the first rays of light, darting from between copper-colored clouds, displayed to view the ravages of the nocturnal hurricane.
Versailles was no longer to be recognized. The ground had imbibed that deluge of water, the trees had absorbed that deluge of fire ; everywhere were seas of muddy water,
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and trees broken, twisted, calcined by that serpent, with burning gripe, called lightning. As soon as it was light, Lonis XV., whose terror was so great that he could not sleep, ordered Lebel, who had never left him during the night, to dress him. He then proceeded to the bridal-chamber, and, pushing open the door, shuddered on perceiving the future queen of France reclining on a prie-dieu, pale, and with eyes swollen and violet-colored, like those of the sublime Magdalen of Rubens. Her terror, caused by the hurricane, had at length been suspended by sleep, and the first dawn of morning which stole into the apartment, tinged with religious respect her long white robe with an azure hue. At the further end of the chamber, in an armchair, pushed back to the wall, and surrounded by a pool of water which had forced its way through the shattered windows, reposed the dauphin of France, pale as his young bride, and, like her, having the perspiration of nightmare on his brow. The nuptial bed Avas in precisely the same state as on the preceding evening.
Louis XV. knit his brow ; a pain, keener than any he had yet felt, darted through that brow like a red-hot iron. He shook his head, heaved a deep sigh, and returned to his apartments, more gloomy and more affrighted, perhaps, at that moment, than he had been during the night.
*******
On the thirtieth of May, that is, on the second day after that tremendous night, that night fraught with presages arid warnings, Paris celebrated in its turn the marriage festival of its future sovereign. The whole population poured, in consequence, toward the Place Louis XV., where were to be exhibited the fire-works, that necessary accompaniment to every great public solemnity, which the Parisian accepts scoffingly, but which he cannot dispense with. The spot was judiciously chosen. Six hundred thousand spectators could move about there at their ease. Around the equestrian statue of Louis XV. had been erected a circular scaffolding, which, by raising the fire-works ten or twelve feet above the ground, enabled all the
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spectators in the place to see them distinctly. The Parisians arrived, according to custom, in groups, and spent some time in choosing the best places, an inalienable privilege of the first comers. Boys found trees, grave men posts, women the railing of fences and temporary stands, erected in the open air, as usual at all Parisian festivities, by gypsy speculators, whose fertile imagination allows them to change their mode of speculation every day. About seven o’clock, along with the earliest of the spectators, arrived several parties of police.
The duty of watching over the safety of Paris was not performed by the French guards, to whom the city authorities would not grant the gratuity of a thousand crowns demanded by their colonel, the Marshal Duke de Biron.
That regiment was both feared and liked by the population by whom each member of the corps was regarded at once as a Caesar and a Mandarin. The French Guards, terrible on the field of battle, inexorable in the fulfilment of their functions, had, in time of peace and out of service, a frightful character for brutality and misconduct. On duty they were handsome, brave, intractable ; and their evolutions delighted the woman and awed husbands ; but when dispersed among the crowds as mere individuals, they became the terror of those whose admiration they had won the day before, and severely persecuted the peo-ple whom they would have to protect on the morrow. Now, the city, finding in its old grudge against these night-brawlers and sharpers a reason for not giving a thousand crowns to the French Guards the city, we say, sent merely its civil force, upon the specious pretext that in a family festivity, like that in preparation, the usual guardians of the family ought to be sufficient. The French Guards, on leave, therefore, mingled among the groups mentioned above, and, as licentious as they would under other circumstances have been severe, they produced among the crowd, in their quality of soldier citizen, all those little irregularities which they would have repressed with the butts of their muskets, with kicks, and
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cuffs, nay, even with taking the offenders into custody, if their commander, their Caesar Biron, had a right to call them on that evening, soldiers.
The shrieks of the women, the grumbling of the citizens, the complaints of the hucksters, whose cakes and ginger-bread were eaten without being paid for, raised a sham tumult preparatory to the real commotion, which could not fail to take place when six hundred thousand sight-loving persons should be assembled on that spot and constituted so animated a scene, that the Place Louis XV., about eight o’clock in the evening, presented much the appearance of one of Tenier’s pictures on a large scale, and with French instead of Dutch merry-makers. After the gamins, or street boys of Paris, at once the most impatient and the idlest in the known world, had taken or clambered up to their places, after the citizens and populace had settled themselves in theirs, the carriages of the nobility and the financiers arrived. No route had been marked out for them ; and they therefore entered the place at random by the Rue de la Madeleine and the Rue St. Horiore, setting down at the new buildings, as they were called, those who had received invitations for the windows and balconies of the governor’s house, from which an excellent view could be obtained of the fire-works.
Such of the persons in carriages as had not invitations left their equipages at the corner of the place, and preceded by their footmen, mingled in the crowd, already very dense, but in which there was still room for any one who knew how to conquer it.. It was curious to observe with what sagacity those lovers of sights availed themselves in their ambitious progress, of every inequality of ground. The very wide, but as yet unfinished street, which was to be called the Rue Royale, was intersected here and there by deep ditches, on the margins of which had been heaped the mold thrown out of them, and other rubbish. Each of these little eminences had its group, looking like a loftier billow rising above the level of that human ocean.
From time to time, this wave, propelled by other waves
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behind it, toppled over, amid the laughter of the multitude, not yet so crowded as to cause such falls to’ be attended with danger, or to prevent those who fell from scrambling to their feet again.
About half -past eight, all eyes, hitherto wandering in different directions, began to converge toward the same point, and to fix themselves on the scaffolding which contained tho fire-works. It was then that elbows, plied without ceasing, commenced to maintain in good earnest the position they had gained, against the assaults of incessantly reinforced invaders.
These fire-works, designed by Ruggieri., were intended to rival a rivalship, by the way, which the storm two evenings before had rendered easy those executed at Versailles by Torre, the engineer. It was known in Paris that Versailles had derived little pleasure from the royal liberality, which had granted fifty thousand livres for their exhibition, since the very first discharges had been extinguished by the rain, and, as the weather was fine on the evening of the thirtieth of May, the Parisians reckoned upon a certain triumph over their neighbors at Versailles.
Besides, Paris expected much more from the old established popularity of Ruggieri, than from the recent reputation of Torre.
Moreover, the plan of Ruggieri, less capricious and less vague than that of his colleague, bespoke pyrotechuical intentions of a highly distinguished order. Allegory, which reigned supreme at that period, was coupled with the most graceful architectural style, and the scaffolding represented the ancient temple of Hymen, which, with the French, rivals in every springing youth the temple of Glory. It was supported by a gigantic colonnade, and surrounded by a parapet, at the angles of which dolphins, open-mouthed, only asvaited the signal to spout forth torrents of flame. Facing the dolphins rose, majestically, leaning upon their urns, the Loire, the Rhone, the Seine, and the Rhine that river which we persist in naturaliz-ing and accounting French in spite of all the world, and,
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if we may believe the modern lays of our friends the Germans, in spite even of itself all four we mean the rivers, repdy to pour forth, instead of water, blue, white, green’ and rose-colored flames, at the moment when the colonnade should be fired.
Other parts of the works, which were to be discharged at the same time, were to form gigantic vases of flowers on the terraces of the temple of Hymen.
Lastly, still upon this same palace, destined to support so many different things, rose a luminous pyramid, terminated by the terrestrial globe. This globe, after emit-ting a rumbling noise like distant thunder, was to burst with a crash and to discharge a mass of colored giran-doles.
As for the bouquet so important and indeed indispensable an accompaniment that no Parisian ever judges of fire-works but by the bouquet Euggieri had separated it from the main body of the structure. It was placed to-ward the river, close to the statue, in a bastion crammed with spa *e rockets, so that the effect would be greatly improved by this additional elevation of six or eight yards, which would place the foot of the sheaf, as it were, upon a pedestal.
Such were the details which had engrossed the attention of all Paris for a fortnight previous. The Parisians now watched with great admiration Ruggieri and his assistants passing like shades amid the lurid lights of their scaffolding, and pausing, with strange gestures, to fix their matches and to secure their priming.
The moment, therefore, that the lanterns were brought upon the terrace of the building an appearance which indicated the approach of the discharge it produced a strong sensation in the crowd, and some rows of the most courageous recoiled, producing a long oscillation which extended to the very extremities of the assembled multitude.